


those who love you

by sixiemelune



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gay Keith (Voltron), Gen, Homophobia, I am honestly kinda really proud of this, I know most people like reading ship fics but plEASE try to give this a chance, Japanese Keith (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) Angst, Keith (Voltron) Backstory, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Orphan Keith (Voltron), POV Keith (Voltron), Parental Krolia (Voltron), broganes, people speaking in arabic and French because yes I will slide language wherever I can
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:09:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29952522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixiemelune/pseuds/sixiemelune
Summary: There is a memory Keith never visits.He buries it, doesn't dare touching it. It reminds him of love, and constellations.
Relationships: Keith & Krolia (Voltron), Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Keith & adoptive parents
Comments: 42
Kudos: 77





	those who love you

There is a family Keith tells no one about.

They live in the corner of his mind, the memories taste like maple syrup and shish taouk. He never goes there. The rare times he ventures around it, he feels like he’s drowning, too caught up in his own feelings, the world before him becomes blurry.

The woman is called Nahida, and the man is named François.

He’s around eleven years old when they take him in after being warned (multiple times) of Keith’s temperament, anger issues, and disobedience.

Nahida and François walk past these issues, not even bothering to look at them twice, taking Keith as their own.

They take their time with him, they don’t expect thank yous, they don’t expect his love.

Nahida often sits with him in the living room, though. She doesn’t say a word, she hands him a book, while she’s working on her own stuff. “Hot chocolate, _hayete_?” She asks.

He doesn’t bother asking what hayete means — figures he won’t be staying long enough for it to be worth it, but he nods. So she brings him hot chocolate, and whispers when François isn’t listening, “I put in some marshmallows but don’t tell François, he’s obsessed with healthy lifestyles, he’d kill me. _Sucre avec du sucre!_ You know, these damn people obsessed with fitness.”

Keith cracks a smile. And she winks, going back to her work.

After a month of small talks, of hot chocolate with Nahida and silent puzzle solving with François, Keith resolves himself into telling Nahida he has no idea what hayete means.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, in a rushed voice. François laughs, and brushes Keith’s hair.

“It’s a term of endearment,” François snorts. “It means _my life_ , you know these damn Arabs, always gotta make everything dramatic.”

Nahida shoots him an unimpressed look, “We’ve been married for ten years and I still have to tell you? _Speaking_ Arabic and _being_ an Arab aren’t the same thing, François.” She turns to Keith. “Don’t let that idiot teach you Arabic, Keith. He can’t pronounce anything to save his life.”

“ _Hey!_ ”

Keith giggles, watching them bicker around Arabic pronunciation, “Don’t sweat it, _habibe_.” — that means darling, Keith learns — “You don’t have it in you. Too French for your own good.”

“I am _Italian,_ Nahida.”

“Tsk, third generation born in Canada, it means the same thing.”

“Oh my God.” He turns to Keith. “See what I have to deal with?”

Keith’s smile gets bigger, biting his lips and refraining another laugh. “Keith, _to2borne,_ don’t mind him. I am a sweetheart I guarantee you.”

“ _To2borne_?” Keith frowns.

“Mhm,” she looks at him. “Guess we should teach you Arabic, shouldn’t we?”

He finds out that _to2borne_ means, _bury me._ When François sees the look of horror on his face, he laughs for a good ten minutes, and every time he tries to stop, and looks back at Keith, he starts laughing once more. Nahida rolls her eyes, and pushes him out of the chair. “I don’t know why I married that idiot.”

“It’s a way of speaking,” Nahida explains later, still eyeing François with a half hearted glare. “I’m not sure how to explain it, really. It’s like loving someone with so much passion, you’ll take the love you have for them to the grave, you see?”

No, Keith really _doesn’t._

“And you tell me Arabic isn’t dramatic,” François snorts. That earns him another slap on his shoulder.

Nahida starts teaching him Arabic — “Plus at your age, Keith,” she tells him. “It’s the best time. Your brain plasticity is _shining_! It wants to learn! It’ll take everything.”

“Hey,” François interrupts. “Where d’you take your Japanese lessons, kid? Maybe we should get you on board, again. Make sure you don’t forget your roots.”

When Keith tells them he’s forgotten most of the Japanese his dad taught him and hasn’t been in contact with anything concerning his roots in the last four years (the system never really bothered), the insulted look on both François and Nahida’s face speaks for itself. They enrol Keith in Japanese Sunday school, asks around where and when are Japanese events and Nahida takes three classes on Japanese studies.

There is a night, when Keith wakes up from a nightmare, and while walking to the kitchen, he catches Nahida trying to tie a knot on a kimono she bought at the store earlier this morning. She doesn’t see him. “ _Yallah_ Nahida,” She tells herself. “You can do it, think of how happy it’ll make Keith. C’mon _._ ”

Keith retires to his room, without saying a word. He thinks this is what love is supposed to feel like.

Nahida and François make friends with Keith’s Japanese professor — invite him over, and Nahida drowns him with question on the food he cooks. And so the next week, Keith is eating shish taouk a day, then cannoli the other, and (a kind of failed attempt) of Nattō on another.

He ends up learning French too — and some Italian, thanks to François. He’s kind of a prodigy at school, it’s easy enough, with his two adoptive parents being professors, and he’s never felt more at home.

He asks François one day on a camping trip if he can go behind the wheel, and François agrees. And Keith might be _really_ small but God, does he have fun. François is laughing, and when Nahida finds them, her face is livid.

“Oh _merde_ ,” François mumbles. “I’m dead.” Keith snickers.

At that camping trip, Keith looks at the stars. He remembers, faintly, that his dad had an obsession with them. He’d look at them with a sense of longing, as if they hid something special. Something he loved. And so he looks at that sky, wondering if his dad ended up finding was he was looking for.

He hopes he has.

He asks François a thousand questions about the constellations, he answers them all gladly. They stay up until three a.m watching the stars, Nahida brings them blankets, and listens to her husband talking.

About a week after camping, he walks back home to find the living room stashed with books on astronomy and astrophysics. “Keith!” François tells him, over a pile of books. “I’ve been reading about the universe, I’ll tell you all about it tonight after homework, how does that sound?”

Keith nods eagerly, and walks into the kitchen where Nahida is following a crash course on Japanese cooking, there’s smoked salmon and rice, soya sauce and sesame oil all over the table and she smiles when she sees Keith.

“Hey there _ya albe_ ,” Keith kisses her cheek. “How was your day?”

He tells her about what happened at school, while picking over the smoked salmon, deserving a scowl from Nahida, who taps his finger. “ _Matekol hala2,”_ she tells him. “Or you’ll be full. We’re eating in twenty minutes.”

“ _Bas jo3an,_ ” Keith pouts. She simply rolls her eyes, sending him back to his room.

François ends up teaching him about the stars, even gives him some astrophysics notions and although he has a really hard time grasping it (François tends to forget he’s talking to a twelve year old), he catches on a few things. And he understands, just a little, what called his father to the stars.

Soon enough, François is driving them on an eight hour trip because there is _‘No way I’m letting Keith miss the Northern lights. It’s a_ must _in an astronomer’s life, Nahida.’_

And Keith can’t believe that this life is _his._ That he gets to have love, love for the person he _is._ Love that doesn’t ask anything from him. There’s no expectations — he can just _be._ And it’s okay. And it’s enough.

So of course something breaks the peace.

They’re going hiking.

They’re going hiking and it’s _great_. Until they hear laughter, and someone giggling. When Keith turns to see where the sound is coming from, he sees two tall figures, two men, kissing.

His heart starts beating faster.

Nahida and François stiffen.

“Don’t look, Keith.” She says, going straight to cover his eyes. He doesn’t miss it — the glare she shoots them.

Keith is silent the rest of the time.

When they get back to the car, it’s hushed whispers. _“I can’t believe it, they’ve got no shame”_ and _“they’re everywhere these days”._

And something in Keith breaks.

Because there’s this boy at school he’s been thinking about — wondering if he should tell him to come over, so maybe they could watch a movie, holds hands under the table and maybe kiss once they got to his room. And Keith is not stupid, there’s nothing _friendly_ about that.

But he never thought it was wrong.

The hushed whispers only seem to grow after that, ‘ _they can get married now, can you believe it?’_ And _‘they want to adopt kids! That’s ridiculous. They’re ruining the child.’_ And ‘ _it’s not normal, it’s n_ ** _ot normal, it’s not normal.’_**

Keith doesn’t think they have the right to judge him when he starts talking less, when he brushes them off when they ask him to do something with them. He doesn’t think they have the right to judge him when he answers only briefly at the table. He doesn’t think they have the right to judge him when they ask him _‘what’s wrong?’_ and he answers ‘ _nothing.’_

But he tries, he tests out the water.

“I have a friend who came out as gay,” he says, one day over the table.

Both Nahida and François stop eating, François looks over to Nahida, probably wondering who’s going to speak first.

“Who is it?”

“Victor.” He takes a bite of the plate, not daring to look at their eyes.

“Did he…did he say anything to you?” François asks.

Keith raises an eyebrow, “like what?”

“Like if he wanted…to do things _with you_.”

“No,” Keith cuts harshly. “And I wouldn’t care. There’s nothing _wrong_ with gay people.”

“Keith.” François warns. “There is literally absolutely nothing natural about their activi—“

“Really? How so?” Keith stands up, clenching his fist. “Please explain it to me.”

“They can’t have children!” François snaps. “If they were normal, they’d be able to! But they can’t _create_ , it’s— look, Keith. It’s clearly a mistake of nature. And perpetuating it will..will influence people.”

“So a woman who’s sterile shouldn’t get married?”

“What?” François frowns. “What are you talking about?”

“A woman who's sterile can’t have children. So with your logic, she shouldn’t get married.”

François groans, “It’s not the same thing Keith!” He looks up to him. “And anyways, why are you so preoccupied by them? Are _you_ gay?”

Keith feels the fear crawling back to his throat, and his nails dig harder in his palms, “What?” He scoffs. “No. I just don’t think you’re right.”

He notices it: how their shoulders relax instantly, the relief in their eyes. And he wants to cry, God, he wants to be out of here. Doesn’t want to stay.

“Keith,” Nahida says softly. “We have to respect them, sure. But we don’t have to think it’s normal.”

And Keith feels his blood boiling, but he doesn’t say a thing. He sits back on the table, and startseating again, silently. When he finishes, he goes straight to his room.

He feels like a fool — what was he expecting? Nothing is ever too good. There’s no one who really wants to love him.

When the social worker comes in for the usual check in, he says he wants to leave. It’s not hard to convince her — he’s been getting into fights at school, receiving almost daily complaints about his behaviour, and there’s no one he listens too.

Both Nahida and François looks up to him, faces mixed with confusion and hurt, and when the social worker leaves them alone, Nahida’s the first one to speaks.

“Why?” She asks.

And what does he have to lose, really? He’s already leaving, there’s no going back to that. So he looks her in the eyes, and the words fall easily. A bomb. Shattering everything they’ve come to believe in, everything they thought Keith was.

“I’m gay.”

Their face falls.

In their eyes, Keith sees all sort of emotions but the most obvious is shame.

Not ashamed of their word, ashamed of _him._ Of Keith.

Ashamed of themselves, for educating Keith in a way that would make him gay. ‘ _Where did I go wrong?’_ It’s all over their faces, analyzing everything they’ve told him that would’ve made Keith _become_ gay.

Because that’s what it is for them. A choice. Something Keith was educated to _think._

“Keith,” François says. “Whatever stupidity they’ve been feeding you at school, you shouldn’t listen to them. They don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s not normal, Keith. You hear me? They’ve…they’ve brainwashed you.”

Keith bites his lips. _Don’t cry._

_Don’t you dare, Keith. Don’t cry. Don’t cry._

“I know someone,” Nahida says. “He can talk you out of it. He can heal you, Keith. You’re going to be okay. All of it will just be a stupid very bad dream.”

The tears burn his cheeks when they fall, and Keith bites his tongue, _I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I promised. I promised I wouldn’t cry._

“You don’t get it, do you?” He laughs, his voice cracks. “I don’t need to be healed. I don’t—”

He sighs, wiping the tears.

_Whatever._

_Whatever, whatever, whatever._

“I’m sure you can ask for a new _normal_ son. But I’m leaving.”

He doesn’t close the door on his way out, but he doesn’t dare look back.

This is the last time he sees them.

* * *

Keith meets Shiro at thirteen year old.

And by now, Keith can recognize kindness a mile away, they all have a smile that reminds him of words of love in Arabic, and the promises of learning about stars. But he doesn’t trust them anymore. He knows kindness comes with a _but_.

So he narrows his eyes when Shiro talks to him, and he cuts him in a speech that he wasn’t really listening.

“I’m gay.”

Shiro raises an eyebrows, “That’s great, gay. I’m Shiro.”

Keith frowns. Shiro immediately starts laughing, “Sorry, that was terrible. I’m glad you feel comfortable telling me, Keith. I’m also gay.”

Keith can’t hide his surprise, but he stills takes a step back. “You don’t- You think it’s normal? You don’t think I should be healed?”

Shiro frowns his eyebrows, something like recognition passing through his eyes, “Keith,” he says. “Love is one of the greatest thing humans get to experience. Why would I want to take it away from you?”

Keith blinks away the tears, clenching his jaw. He doesn’t cry anymore, he doesn’t show anything anymore, but he sure wants to.

“Thank you,” he ends up saying.

(It hurts a little, when Shiro asks him how he knows the stars so well, how he’s able to name all the constellations, and how some concepts of astrophysics don’t seem to intimidate him)

(It hurts a little, when Shiro lets something slips in Japanese, and Keith replies without missing a beat, earning an awed look from Shiro)

(He doesn’t let himself dwell on it. Buries the thought. Doesn’t visit it.)

(He has Shiro now.)

( _He has Shiro now._ )

* * *

The memories end and he feels like he’s been struck by lightning. He stands up with a yelp, the wolf immediately running close to him, probably having felt Keith’s quickened heartbeat.

He’s back in the quantum abyss.

He takes a deep breath. No. _No, no._ He’s not going to think about it.

_It’s okay, Keith. Empty your thoughts. Empty your thoughts. They don’t exist if you don’t let them be there. Just a bad memory. Just need to bury it. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. NothING HAPPENED._

His head shoots up, remembering Krolia next to him. He bites his lips, silently hoping she didn’t witness that.

Of course, Keith’s never been that lucky.

Krolia is staring at him, and there is something so vulnerable in her eyes. There’s guilt, so much guilt, and he sees the dried tears on her cheeks. She’s shaking, she raises her hand but immediately lowers it.

“Keith.” She says.

That’s all it takes before he explodes.

He’s crying, he’s crying and he’s not stopping. The tears don’t stop, they burn — _just like that time —,_ they keep coming.

He cries. He cries the tears he should’ve cried when he left François and Nahida’s home, he cries the tears he should’ve cried when Shiro was declared dead, he cries the tears he should’ve cried when Shiro disappeared again, he cries for all these years he thought he was unworthy of love, for all these years he spent alone in the dark, wondering if someone would ever look at him, and accept him for him. _Love him_ for him.

And maybe it’s because he hasn’t felt the arms of a mother around him for a long time, maybe it’s because he’s in dire need of human contact, maybe it’s because there’s a hole in his heart where Nahida and François used to live, but when Krolia approaches him, and takes him in his arms, still shaking, and cheeks stained with tears he lets her.

“I’m so sorry.” She mumbles. “Keith, I’m so sorry. I should’ve been here— I, I’m so sorry.”

Krolia tightens her hold on him, and with a strangled voice, she starts singing.

_Vam tnem Mama,_

_Vam tnem Keith, Vam yijeeha nowmir_

_Mama, Mama, pelo aswad we mnaa_

_Wili tebak besarak, y tidio ghalir_

And Keith knows it is Galran, but when Krolia sits down, still singing, and he starts closing his eyes, the words blur and he almost hears bits of Arabic, bits of French.

And if he falls asleep remembering hands helping him tie the knot of his kimono, and the names of the constellation, he doesn’t really think anyone can blame him.

**Author's Note:**

> Not so long ago, I was thinking about how I never really read anything where a queer kid had very good, lovely and sweet parents who, despite them being very kind, couldn't accept their child's queerness. I only ever see really rude parents, or really accepting parents in media. 
> 
> Anyways, I was talking to Finn (who's fics you should def check out [here. ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonguilt/pseuds/moonguilt)) and it got me thinking about writing my own fic. You know, why not. Give people what I want to see. 
> 
> Sometimes people are really kind souls. They're great people, and you love them. You really, really do. But they're homophobic so it's hard for you to stay with them. And I'm telling you, right now, it's okay to be selfish. It's okay to leave. You're not a monster for that. And you're going to be okay. 
> 
> About the song Krolia sang to Keith in Galran, it is actually a 'translation' of an arabic lullaby most moms sing to their kids, that you can listen to [here. ](https://youtu.be/-vhEbq4u5QE)Basically it would translate to:  
> Come on go to sleep, Mama / come on go to sleep, Keith, may sleep come to you / Mama, Mama, your hair are dark and beautiful / And the ones who loves you, they kiss you and the ones who hate you, they leave 
> 
> I'm not going to translate the exact wording but I went with the same idea from aphasia's curse (my previous fic, find it [here ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28161597)), so basically mixing words from arabic & spanish to build the language
> 
> "Mama" is the way a lot of people who speak arabic call their kids. I'm not really sure why, it's pretty weird ngl, but it's like a term of endearment? (yeah I know...arabic has weird ass terms of endearment...) 
> 
> I also definitely imagine Nahida singing arabic songs & Keith ending up learning them so....here's [a really fun mashup of arabic songs :)](https://youtu.be/U0LBXnQpfVQ)  
> That's it! I really hope you enjoyed it haha, I'm quite proud of it  
>   
> Come talk to me on:  
> [Twitter :) ](https://twitter.com/sixiemelune)  
> [Tumblr :) ](https://sixiemelune.tumblr.com)  
>   
> Translations:  
> Sucre avec du sucre: sugar with sugar!  
> Yallah: come on  
> Oh merde: oh shit  
> ya albe: my heart (another term of endearment)  
> Matekol hala2: Don't eat now (also the number isn't random, it's because there's some letters in arabic that don't exist in the English alphabet so we add numbers who 'look' like these letters)  
> Bas jo3an: but I'm hungry
> 
> Don't forget to leave a kudo & a comment if you liked it ;)  
> (I need validation can yall rly blame me..)


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